Textual Criticism

05/14/2015

Is the Original Text of the New Testament Lost? Rethinking Our Access to the Autographs

by Michael Kruger

One of the standard challenges for New Testament textual criticism is whether we can work our way back to the original text. Some scholars are notoriously skeptical in this regard. Since we only have later copies, it is argued, we cannot be sure that the text was not substantially changed in the time period that pre-dates those copies.

Helmut Koester and Bart Ehrman are examples of this skeptical approach. Koester has argued that the text of the New Testament in the earliest stages was notoriously unstable. Most major changes, he argues, would have taken place in the first couple centuries.

Ehrman makes a similar case. Since we don’t have the originals, and only copies of copies of copies, then who knows what the text was really like before our extant copies were made.

But is it really true that we only possess copies of copies of copies? Is there really an enormous gap, as Koester and Ehrman maintain, between the autographs and our earliest copies?

A recent article by Craig Evans of Acadia University suggests otherwise. In the most recent issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research, Evans explores the question of how long manuscripts would have lasted in the ancient world, and whether that might provide some guidance of how long the autographs might have lasted–and therefore how long they would have been copied.

Evans culls together an insightful and intriguing amount of evidence to suggest that literary manuscripts in the ancient world would last hundreds of years, on average. Appealing to the recent study of G.W. Houston, he argues that manuscripts could last anywhere from 75 to 500 years, with the average being about 150 years.

The implications of this research on the textual stability of the New Testament are not difficult to see…

04/30/2015

The Reliability of the Bible: 4 Quick Thoughts

Reasonable Theology

You are likely familiar with some of the hundreds of resources you can go to for an in-depth look at how Scripture has been preserved. In a conversational setting, however, it is not always practical to bring these resources into the discussion and it is difficult to recite from memory the relevant information that you’ve studied. As a part of a focus on ‘conversational apologetics’ this article seeks to provide a way to confidently outline some important aspects of defending the Bible.

Instead of trying to memorize specific facts, we recommend focusing on understanding these four areas of evidence. Having a firm grasp of these larger, more generalized topics can give you the confidence to introduce others to the facts about why we can trust that our Bible’s accurately preserve what was originally written by the authors.

These four areas will give an overview of the reliability of Scripture and includes a few memorable supporting facts for each. These points are by no means an exhaustive discussion on defending the validity of the Bible, and they are not intended to be. They will, however, help you navigate a discussion of Scripture’s reliability with truth and confidence.

Additional details can be used to supplement and strengthen these conversation points. There are recommended resources for further study at the end of each section.

1. We Have Thousands of Biblical Manuscripts

The fact is, we do not have any of the original writings of Biblical books. The original writings were often written on animal skin and other materials that deteriorate rather quickly. So if what we have are copies of copies of the originals, how can we know that they are accurate?

Fortunately, there is an incredible number of surviving copies of original Biblical writings. These copies are called manuscripts, and there are roughly 6,000 surviving manuscripts for the New Testament alone. This makes it the best attested document of all ancient writings. The next closest contender is Homer’s The Iliad, which has only 600 existing copies.

The value of having a large number of manuscripts is that it provides us with ample opportunity to compare writings, which is especially valuable when cross-checking manuscripts from different geographic areas or from different time periods. When making these comparisons you can determine whether it is apparent that the documents were reliably copied from the same source, and you can quantify how much they may have strayed from that source by seeing where and how they differ. In short, having an abundance of manuscripts shows us that copying Scripture was not…

04/14/2015

Are Modern Bibles Accurate?

by Dave DeSonier

The January 2, 2015 issue of Newsweek magazine featured on its cover an article in which the author states that we can't possibly know, today, what the authors actually said in the original bible documents. To quote from the article:

At best, we've all read a bad translation -- a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.

The premise is that the bible we have today is not an accurate representation of what the original authors wrote. But is this claim true?

Translations

Has today's bible really come to us via a long series of language translations, say from Greek to Latin to Armenian to Russian to German to Spanish to English? Or something similar to that? Absolutely NOT.

Our modern English translations of the bible come directly from Greek, the original language in which the New Testament was written. Whether you're using NIV, NASB, NLT, etc., the English text was translated by a team of scholars directly from the Greek. Many bibles will include an explanation of the translation process used.

So on this point the Newsweek author is clearly wrong. Either he is woefully misinformed, or he is purposely trying to mislead readers regarding the process by which modern bibles were translated..

Copies

On the other hand, he is correct that our bible came from copies; we don't have the original of any document from antiquity. However, he exaggerates significantly; many New Testament copies are dated quite close in time to the originals, and cannot simply be dismissed as "copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times."

Not just bible documents are copies, but so are all other ancient documents you've ever read. For none of them do we have the original that was penned by the author. The materials used in ancient times simply don't last for 2,000 years. They decay over time, and thus make it necessary for scribes to copy documents in order to perpetuate the author's work. The copies available to us are called manuscripts, where 'manuscript' can mean a copy of the entire book, or of only a chapter of the book, or perhaps of just a fragment of one page.

Even though it was from a copy, my high school English teacher still made me read Homer's Iliad…

04/02/2015

Establishing the Gospels’ Reliability

Q: I noticed that in many of your debates and articles, you put a lot of stock and faith in the Gospel narratives. I do consider myself a Christian but have a big doubt. How do we really know if those Gospel narratives are really all that reliable? Sure, they are historical, but are they true or not? I could write a paper about how big foot, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus came to my house and watched TV with me, then thousands of years later people stumble upon my documents and consider them to be true. The discovers of the ancient Joe documents then say, "Well, we consider it truthful because there are about 26,000 complete copies and fragments of these ancient documents that have been found in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Plus, there are only about 680 copies of the Odyssey by Homer, which makes the Joe narratives completely reliable." Sure, they are historical but, definitely not true. What makes the Gospel narratives truthful and not fake? If I can get this question answered, I can finally have faith that God has truly risen Jesus from the dead, and know that I will go to heaven. If you or maybe one of your assistants can answer this question, that would help me a lot. Thank you. —Joe

A: I’m glad for your question, Joe, because it surfaces a number of misconceptions that are widely shared by Christians and non-Christians alike.

Your fundamental question is: how do we know that the Gospel narratives are historically reliable? You correctly observe that that question is not to be answered by appeal to the abundance and age of the manuscripts of the Gospels. The idea that the abundance and age of the manuscripts of the Gospels is evidence for their historical reliability is a misconception fostered by popular Christian apologetics. It’s true that the New Testament is the best attested book in ancient history, both in terms of the number of manuscripts and the nearness of those manuscripts to the date of the original. What that goes to prove is that the text of the New Testament that we have today is almost exactly the same as the text as it was originally written. Of the approximately 138,000 words in the New Testament only about 1,400 remain in doubt. The text of the New Testament is thus about 99% established. That means that when you pick up a (Greek) New Testament today, you can be confident that you are reading the text as it was originally written. Moreover, that 1% that remains uncertain has to do with trivial words on which nothing of importance hangs. This conclusion is important because it explodes the claims of Muslims, Mormons, and others that the text of the New Testament has been corrupted, so that we can no longer read the original text. It’s awe-inspiring to think that we can know with confidence that when we pick Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, for example, we are reading the very words he wrote almost 2,000 years ago.

But, as you say, that doesn’t prove that what these documents say is historically accurate. We could have the text of Aesop’s fables established to 99% accuracy, and that would do nothing to show that they are true stories. After all, they are intended to be fables, not history. People in the future would say something similar about the Joe narratives, no matter how many copies existed.

03/26/2015

Why Markan Authorship Wouldn't Be Fabricated

by Jason Engwer

Here are some of the reasons why Christians who were lying or speculating about the authorship of the second gospel probably wouldn't have come up with Mark as the author:

"Moreover, in almost every early tradition that we know, both within and beyond the New Testament, 'Mark' cuts a decidedly second- or third-rate figure. Among the fascinating characteristics of the early traditions about Mark are their proliferation and oddity: relative to their references to the other Evangelists and Gospels, patristic texts seem to discuss Mark more yet use his Gospel less. Furthermore, in their comments about the Evangelist, the majority seem noticeably awkward, apologetic, and sometimes even pejorative….Less important than adjudicating among these interpretations of kolobodaktylos [a title applied to Mark by patristic sources], all of which are unavoidably speculative, is observing that which they hold in common: the nuance of diminished integrity, whether in regard to physical or moral capacities. A term like kolobodaktylos, with its connotations of deformity or cowardice, probably would have registered among listeners or readers in Mediterranean antiquity as a slur or (at best) as a lament, not as a compliment….First, for Eusebius the figure of Mark is of only minor concern, secondary to other historical preoccupations. Although the Church History has proved to be a mine of traditions about Mark and other personalities of the apostolic age, nowhere in that work does Eusebius devote a section to Mark as a leading character in his own right….On the teeming stage of Christian antiquity Mark is little more than a bit player." (C. Clifton Black, Mark: Images Of An Apostolic Interpreter [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2001], 11-2, 118, 158, 254)

So, Mark was a relatively minor figure who was remembered for some disreputable behavior and/or an embarrassing physical deformity.

You could try to lessen the weakness of Mark as a potential author by denying that he's the Mark who's criticized in Acts 13:13 and 15:36-40. But even if Mark's disreputable behavior is taken off the table, the other two problems - his minor role in early church history and his physical deformity - remain. And even if we were to conclude that the Mark of Acts 13 and 15 is some other Mark, the view of the early Christians is more important in this context, and they didn't make that distinction between two Marks…

03/25/2015

Text, Typos and Transmission: Why You Can Trust the New Testament

by Mark Pierson

More than any other ancient writing, the New Testament has tons of evidence that show that it has been faithfully and accurately copied and transmitted down through the ages. Check out this week's article spotlight from the The Apologetics Issue of Higher Things Magazine where Pastor Mark Pierson highlights the amazing way in which the New Testament has been preserved and gives you the facts for reminding those who doubt, that the New Testament is a book as reliable as they come! Click here for a PDF copy of the article and a ready-to-use Bible Study based on the article.

I remember when it first dawned on me that there might be “problems” with the New Testament. As I casually flipped through the red-lettered words of Jesus in my parents’ study Bible, something surprising caught my eye. There, in the Gospel of John, I noticed a particularly strange footnote. It said something like, “This part is not the same in all ancient manuscripts.” This struck me as rather odd and out of place. Why would a note like that be in the New Testament? Does this mean we don’t know the whole truth about Jesus? Can a book that contains typos really be God’s holy Word?

Not all of these questions were at the forefront of my mind that day, but years later they popped up. In fact, one of the most common misconceptions about the New Testament (NT) is that it has been copied, translated, and altered so many times that it no longer resembles what the original authors wrote. Thankfully, an apologist—a defender of the faith—explained to me why the NT is actually the most trustworthy collection of texts from the entire ancient world.

The Older the Better: The Earliest NT ManuscriptsHave you heard those radio ads telling you to back up your computer before it crashes and all your data is erased? Well, as far as we know, the original writings of the NT have been erased from existence. Copies were made, but since neither computers nor the printing press existed back then, everything was preserved by hand for centuries. So how do we know some drunken monks from the Middle Ages didn’t change the text? Maybe somewhere along the line people put words into the mouth of Jesus, having Him claim to be God, or that His death would pay for our sins, when He himself never said such things. Could it be that the text was tampered with and we just don’t know it? The answer is NO, for at least two reasons.

First, the oldest surviving parts of the NT date all the way back to the beginning of the second century. This may seem like it’s still not early enough, since Jesus and the apostles lived in the first century. But keep in mind that most of the NT was written in the latter half of that century, such that only a couple of decades separate the last living apostle from our earliest copies…

Reasons for Holding the Unity of Isaiah

by Brian Chilton

Isaiah is the theological masterpiece of the Old Testament. It is in Isaiah that one finds the powerful so-called “Servant Songs” which address the future Messiah. Isaiah’s prophecies span the course of several centuries. Due to the timeframe of Isaiah’s prophecies, many textual critics have claimed that Isaiah son of Amoz could not have written or prophesied all of the prophecies contained within the book. This has led some to posit that Isaiah consists of three books written by three authors compiled together under the heading “Isaiah.” Such critics claim that chapters “1-39 were written by ‘Isaiah of Jerusalem’ and 40-66 (or 40-55) by an ‘unknown prophet of the Exile’” (LaSor, et. al., Old Testament Survey, 282). Some divide Isaiah into three books: the so-called proto-Isaiah (1-39) written by Isaiah of Jerusalem; deutero-Isaiah (40-55) written by an unknown prophet; and trito-Isaiah (56-66) written by an exilic prophet. While many critical scholars accept this view, a growing number of scholars are beginning to reject that notion and accept the unity of the book of Isaiah. I, for one, accept the unity of Isaiah for the following reasons.

Unity Seen through Early Acceptance of Isaiah as a Whole

From the earliest times, the book of Isaiah has been accepted as a unified whole. In the Great Scroll of Isaiah, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran (1QIsa) “makes not the slightest break at the end of chapter 39” (LaSor, et. al., Old Testament Survey, 290). Jesus and the early church accepted Isaiah as a unified book as they quoted from the book in several places without giving any reference to multiple authors. If early Jews and early Christians accepted a unified Isaiah, one would need to find overwhelming evidence to the contrary to suggest otherwise, evidence that this writer does not find.

Unified Theological Concepts

Isaiah addresses several major theological concepts which are united within the entire book of Isaiah. LaSor and company denote that “Several dozen parallels in wording, concepts, and literary images have been identified to demonstrate the linkage between the two halves of the book” (LaSor, et. al., Old Testament Survey, 283). Barker and Kohlenberger demonstrate that “Isaiah’s temple vision (ch. 6) of the thrice-holy God deeply influenced his whole prophetic career and his theology” (Barker & Kohlenberger, EBC, 1043). Isaiah notes the grandeur of God as the angels call to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).[1] This theme is seen throughout the book of Isaiah. Barker and Kohlenberger denote that Isaiah “speaks of God as Creator both of the universe (40:26; 42:5; 48:12-13) and of his people, Israel (43:1, 15). He has a vision of the whole earth full of the knowledge of the Lord (11:9) and even of a new heaven and a new earth (65:17; 66:22)” (Barker & Kohlenberger, EBC, 1043). Hope and forgiveness are constantly seen throughout the book of Isaiah, from 1:18-19, 30:18-19, and ultimately through the suffering servant in 52:13-53:12. These theological concepts are not broken but flood the entirety of the book of Isaiah…

You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. John 18:37

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For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

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For we did not follow cleverly contrived myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. 2 Peter 1:16